There are many streaming-media services which may be operated on both a traditional computer, in addition to various types of mobile devices. Typically, the state of a user's activity and preferences may be preserved when the same account is loaded in either environment. For example, the user is able to access the same playlists and songs from the traditional computer and the user's mobile device. There is also capability for a second device to resume playback of a datastream where a first device left off. For example, a user may start watching a video on his/her living room TV and stop watching after about 47 minutes. When that user opens the video on his/her iPad, the service knows to start playback at the 47 minute mark, since a reference was stored on the service's central system to indicate the playback progress.
One performance optimization for streaming media services is to buffer content that is known or likely to be played in the near future. For example, in video applications the next N-minutes may be proactively downloaded so they are available in the event that the network experiences an outage or latency. In a music application, the next N-songs may be downloaded so there is not a delay between tracks while the next song is downloaded.
A current technique for mobile devices is described in US 2013/0166669 that establishes a shared cache between multiple mobile devices requiring a push of data from a source device to a remote device.
Other techniques include file synchronization services, e.g., such as provided by Apple Photostream®, that back up and synchronizes image files across a set of devices linked to an account where the account has an associated cloud storage service which can automatically download the files to other linked devices.